Michigan won its first college football national championship since 1997 with a victory over Washington. With the CFP title comes more revenue … and more expenses. The school’s Champions Circle NIL collective is on pace to pay out $4.8 million this year.getty images
Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel strode off the field at NRG Stadium in Houston, his grin wider than an east Texas oil field.
Manuel, the towering former Wolverines defensive tackle, is among the more reserved administrators in these hyper-public settings. But last week, with the catharsis of a national title in tow, he held that ear-to-ear grin as maize and blue confetti streamed down and reporters lobbed questions his way.
Among the last queries he received before dipping into the tunnel, Michigan fans draped over either side: What are the long-term financial ramifications after a night like this?
“Listen, we’re open for a lot of donations,” he said in a booming voice. “People can keep them coming. If you have anybody out there and you want to give us a donation, pleeeease. We are here for you. That’s what [a national title] means.”
There’s an obvious symbiosis between fundraising and success in college football. Deep-pocketed donors are more inclined to give to a program at the top of its respective league.
With the four-team playoff now a part of history and a 12-team format set to be ushered in next fall, there’s reason to look back at the financial constructions of the champions of these past 10 years.
The dollar figures in college football have increased exponentially — and the teams raising trophies, like the Wolverines last week, are those willing to spend like it.
“I think that anytime you look back 15 to 20 years in any part of athletics — whether it was 2000 to 1985 or 2023 back to 2003 — you’re going to see some just incredible differences in cost, and you’ll see differences in revenue,” said Miami AD Dan Radakovich, who previously served as the AD at Clemson during the Tigers’ two most recent national championships. “It’s just a growth industry that continues to be something that, whether it’s television revenue for a while, ticket revenue or sponsorship revenue, there’s always an impetus to help kind of bump it up to the next level.”
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Radakovich takes a moment to reflect on his first few months on Clemson’s campus.
The Tigers had their past moments on the gridiron upon his arrival from Georgia Tech in 2012 — a 1981 national title the high point of those. Still, it had been more than 40 years since that lone championship, and the school desired upping the ante.
“[Coach] Dabo [Swinney] and I had a number of conversations,” Radakovich said. “And what he really wanted was to be able to have [football] all in one area — the day-to-day and everything that was subsequently built.”
Fast forward a decade, one in which Radakovich presided over Swinney’s pair of national titles in 2016 and 2018, along with appearances in the CFP championship game in 2016 and 2019. Naturally, revenue picked up.
Clemson saw its athletic department revenue jump from $83.5 million to $158.2 million between fiscal years 2015 (the first year of the CFP) and 2022, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics’ College Athletics Database, which houses publicly available financial information through the 2022 title game.
That revenue included a leap from just over $19.97 million in donor contributions in 2015 to $60.8 million in 2022, along with an $11 million increase in media rights revenue from the ACC in that time. Overall, Clemson’s 89% increase in revenue over that span was a more than 30% edge over the average public ACC or FBS school in that same time frame.
During a period when Clemson won two national titles and made two other CFP final appearances, donor revenue jumped from $19.97 million in 2015 to $60.8 million in 2022. getty images
That said, as the football program rose, so too did the cost. The school saw spending increases for the overall program jump from $29.02 million to $55.99 million between FY 2015 and 2023 — a nearly 50% higher rate than the average FBS program.
More specifically, Clemson bumped up its recruiting budget from just under $1.07 million during the 2016 campaign to $2.2 million in 2018, along with an increase in support staff salaries from $4.55 million during the 2016 season to $7.96 million in 2020, according to NCAA financial documents obtained by Sports Business Journal.
Coaching salaries, too, have skyrocketed across college football. The Knight Commission’s database suggests public FBS schools spent an average of just less than $1.8 million more on coaching salaries in the 2022 fiscal year compared to the first season of the CFP in 2015. Those numbers are exacerbated at the highest level of the sport. NCAA financial filings from Alabama show Nick Saban, for example, saw the portion of his salary paid by the university climb from $4.2 million annually in 2009 to $10.5 million during the 2021 football season. Georgia’s Kirby Smart saw his money paid by the school climb from $5.8 million in his first year as head coach in 2016 to a little over $7.4 million during his 2021 national title campaign, according to those same documents.
“I think what we’ve seen in terms of the increased spending in football has been the growth of football coaching salaries for the 11 countable coaches,” Knight Commission CEO Amy Perko said when asked why price tags in college football have ballooned. “The data shows that the salaries and benefits for those 11 coaches have been growing at least two times faster than scholarships — and in some cases, three times faster. Severance packages have tripled since the CFP began. And then you have the growth in football-specific staff.”
The growth in spending at Clemson over its recent successes is par for the course among programs that have won national titles during the four-team playoff era. Ohio State, LSU and Georgia all spent at least 110% more on football from Year 1 to Year 8 of the four-team playoff era, according to the Knight Commission’s database. Michigan and Alabama, too, were above the FBS average in regard to football spending growth at a more than 60% change in dollars each over that span.
“The game has totally changed,” Radakovich said. “I mean, 10 years ago, there were nine [assistant] coaches and a head coach. Now there are 10 coaches and the head coach. Everyone has directors of operations and analysts and an assistant for just about every one of the coaches and the analyst role.”
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Ninety minutes after Jalen Milroe tripped on his own lineman and landed short of the Michigan goal line at the Rose Bowl, Aaron Suttles’ camera rolled. The director of content for the Yea Alabama NIL collective had a message for those mourning Tide fans clasping their crimson and white pom poms in despair.
“In this disappointment, we need to take action,” Suttles said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We need you to help build Alabama’s NIL entity into the biggest in the country. Yea Alabama needs your support.”
The 96-second video offered perhaps the perfect manifestation of the new piece of the college football money discussion as the playoff shifts to 12 teams: NIL.
Locker rooms with recliners, photo shoots and glitzy uniforms are lesser concerns these days. Success in college football is increasingly decided by those willing to shell out the millions in name, image and likeness funds in piecing together the best team this side of the San Gabriel Mountains.
That NIL has overtaken the sport shouldn’t come as a surprise. Coaches and administrators warned as much in the lead-up to July 1, 2021, when such practices were deemed permissible by NCAA leadership.
Jared Wangler, who spent the better part of five years clashing with All-Big Ten defenders as a fullback at Michigan between 2014 and 2019, has since taken on a leading role with the Champions Circle Collective and related entity, Valiant Sports Management Group.
Wangler and Champions Circle co-founder Phil Hollyer started the collective in 2021. That first year, which came just a few months after Michigan slogged to a 2-4 mark during the COVID-19 affected 2020 season, Wangler estimates the collective raised roughly $400,000 as it built out its infrastructure and educated donors on the increasingly necessary layer to Michigan’s athletic operations.
Last week, Jim Harbaugh’s squad earned its first national title since 1997 and, with a pair of CFP berths in tow over the last three years, the Champions Circle was on track to pay out $4.8 million this year, according to Wangler.
“Three College Football Playoff appearances, what that not only does for the brand of the University of Michigan … [but] the university itself ... enrollment is at an all-time high, applications at an all-time high, fundraising is at an all-time high. So you look at what the football program has been able to do for the universe,” said Wangler.
College football is in the midst of massive changes. Alabama’s Saban is off to retirement. Lt. Gen. Rich Clark will take over atop the CFP from executive director Bill Hancock.
The NCAA, too, has increasingly more complicated issues to sift through in regard to student-athlete employment, among others.
And while the transfer portal, messy as it is, has helped disperse talent and brought increasing parity to the sport, the winners in modern college football are those with the biggest dollars.
As Manuel said in so many words, college football’s powers are open for business.
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